Automotive Leather Cleaning Tips: How Do I Clean My Seats?

Justin is a long-time friend and the newest member of The Seat Shop team. Justin has a bachelor of science degree in business from Amberton University and over a decade of sales experience. Having previously owned a family business, Justin brings a wealth of knowledge to The Seat Shop team. His strong work ethic, follow through and attention to detail are only a few of the many strengths the team has quickly come to expect and rely on from Justin.

Justin manages The Seat Shop’s wholesale division, working directly with our upholstery shops partners across the country and over seas. With his ever growing product knowledge and high degree of business principles and ethics, Justin has quickly become a very valuable addition to our team.

Justin is a Texan and a native of Dallas. He is an Eagle Scout and an avid outdoorsman. In his free time, he likes fishing, hunting, camping, boating and four-wheeling. He also enjoys country music is even known to do a little two-stepping on the weekends.

Jill is a native of Plano, TX. She attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and graduated with her Masters in Accounting in 2006.

Before working full-time for The Seat Shop, Jill was an Algebra teacher and soccer coach at a local high school. As The Seat Shop grew over the years, they found themselves in desperate need of someone who could take over the growing accounting responsibilities as well as develop and integrate new efficient business processes.

In 2009, Jill left education and became the Controller at The Seat Shop. Her ability to keep track of the many moving parts of our business and keep them all organized has allowed us to grow at such a rapid pace while maintaining a high level of customer service.

Jill is married to Matt, one of the owners and their child Grant was born in May 2011. She enjoys spending time with her family and dog, Biscuit, and watching almost any sporting event.

Hunter was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. After high school, he attended Kilgore Junior College in East Texas for 2 years before transferring to The University of Oklahoma. He graduated from OU in December of 2008 with a degree in Economics. Shortly after graduating, Hunter moved back to Dallas and began looking for a job. Hunter met Brian at a mutual friends’ bachelor party and had gotten back in touch with him at an April 2009 NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway.

The Seat Shop was at the race for their first company retreat and soon Matt, Brian and Hunter began talking about The Seat Shop. A few months after the race, The Seat Shop was growing so quickly they could barely keep up with all the orders. Hunter was hired part-time to help in the back and caught on very quickly. It wasn’t long before Hunter was offered a full time position as Operations Manager. At The Seat Shop, Hunter is responsible for the day to day research and development of new patterns and product offerings. Hunter shares Matt and Brian’s passion for customer service and often is the recipient of letters from customers thanking him for his service and attention to them. His attention to detail and his ability to research and solve manufacturing challenges has allowed the company to operate more efficiently and enjoy a shorter product development cycle.

In his spare time, Hunter enjoys hunting and fishing at his family’s ranch in East Texas. He also enjoys summer weekends at Lake Texoma with his friends. Hunter is an avid sports fan and has got most of the office listening to sports talk radio and watching every Rangers, Stars, or Cowboys game. But nothing comes close to Hunters devotion to OU Sooners football. As certain as death and taxes, if the Sooners are playing, Hunter will be watching.

Brian brings so much to The Seat Shop team. His ability to adapt on the fly and solve complex problems with innovative solutions enables us to address challenges effectively and efficiently. With what others at the shop refer to as “The Vault”, Brian stores an immense amount of knowledge between his ears. If any of the other team members have a question about seam patterns, compatibility issues, etc. Brian is always the guy they turn to. His passion for serving his customers is un-matched in the industry and has helped build The Seat Shop’s reputation of being obsessed with Customer Service.

On the weekends you will likely find Brian either duck hunting in the winter or at the lake in the summer. He is an avid hunter and loves shooting sporting clays in the off season and riding his four wheeler. In the summer you will likely see him flying across the lake in his speed boat or floating in a cove with his friends. Where ever you find Brian, you know his golden retriever “Bud” will always be close behind. Brian lives in Little Elm, TX.

The rest of the story…

Born and raised in Richardson, TX Brian has always been an entrepreneur at heart. His professional resume can reach as far as the 3rd grade, selling candy on the playground. Of course Brian wasn’t happy just selling a few pieces of candy each day, so he would call the school directory and take “pre-orders” for the following day! After the teachers figured out why all the kids were so hyper after recess, the principal shut his operation down. Brian knew then what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wanted to own his own business. Through Junior High and High School Brian started and grew Crew Cut Lawn Service, a landscaping company that he would later sell before going to college.

Brian attended the University of Arkansas where he became a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and earned his degree in Business Management and Small Business Entrepreneurship. Upon graduation he returned to Dallas and began working at a technology recruiting firm McArthur and Associates. After gaining great sales and prospecting experience from McArthur, it wasn’t long before he felt the need to pursue his dream. With a love for cooking and business, Brian started Brian’s Best Concessions and Catering. Brian’s Best soon began building relationships and booking events with regular clients. The work was hard and the hours were long, but Brian’s work ethic and determination kept him going.

A few years past and Brian continued to work at growing Brian’s Best. In 2006 Brian and his brother Matt decided to start a business together and The Seat Shop was born. Now working on growing two companies, Brian’s day would start at 5am and sometimes wouldn’t end until midnight or later. On a particularly hot summer day while working in his concession trailer he had made a startling discovery. Brian had made more money selling 3rd Row Seats on eBay in a few hours than he did all day in his concession trailer. It wasn’t long before he sold Brian’s Best and dedicated 100% of his time to growing The Seat Shop. The rest as they say is history.

At The Seat Shop Matt manages the business direction and growth strategy of the company. In such a fast moving company it is easy for everyone to get lost in “fighting fires” as they call it and never step back and look at the big picture of the company. Matt has a great ability to take all the moving parts of the business and manage the team in order to keep everyone moving in the same direction towards the same goals. His unique ability to turn creative visions into reality has enabled the company to realize exponential growth year after year.

Matt is also responsible for the IT infrastructure of the company and manages their e-commerce website, the eBay store, and the company’s Amazon.com presence. Matt enjoys visiting with and helping individual customers and also oversees The Seat Shop’s growing network of dealer partners.

Matt is married to Jill, the company’s controller, and they have a son named Grant and a daughter Molly. Matt loves to watch the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys. Matt loves all types of music and enjoys playing guitar with his friends from time to time. He is a tech geek at heart and always loves learning about the latest gadget or software that hits the market. Most of all Matt loves just spending time with his family, their dog Biscuit, and is very excited about what lies ahead.

The rest of the story…

Born and raised in Richardson TX, Matt attended the University of Arkansas and is a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In 2001 he graduated with a degree in Computer Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis. Despite the collapse of the dot com bubble, Matt was recruited straight of out college to be a Programmer Analyst at Dillard’s Store Systems at their corporate offices in Little Rock Arkansas.

Shortly after starting at Dillard’s, Matt was responsible to writing the back end software that would help the new inventory software communicate with their legacy main frame systems. Matt also played a critical role in the data conversion necessary to re-write Dillard’s supply system software. After gaining some recognition for his role in these projects, the upper management selected Matt to represent Dillard’s in various speaking engagements. At the age of 23 Matt would share the stage with notable business leaders from across the state speaking to college seniors about the transition from college to the business world.

After almost 2 years with Dillard’s Matt was ready for a change and began seeking business opportunities in Dallas, TX. PriceWaterhouseCoopers was in the middle of a major re-write of their auditing software to be deployed globally, and in 2003 they hired Matt as a consultant to test and crash their software in order to eliminate problems before the implementation. After working on this project for a year, Matt decided he wanted to transition into the world of sales. His father was a successful salesman and Matt wanted the ability to directly determine how much income he earned, based on hard work and merit. With little sales experience but a lot of determination, Matt began sending out resume’s and cover letters explaining why they should hire a “technology guy” as their next salesman. Finally Matt got a big break and was hired at the telecommunications firm Inter-Tel Technologies (now Mitel).

Determined to be successful in the sales arena, for the next year Matt spent most of his time at the office. Always starting the first pot of coffee, Matt would usually greet everyone with a “Good Morning” and everyone (including the managers) would make a point to come by his office to say “Good Night” before they left the office. He soon knew the night janitors by name and if you drove by any given night you would most likely see the glow of a single office light through his office window. His hard work eventually began to pay off. Among 20 seasoned salesmen, Matt finished his first year as the number two salesmen just behind one of the top producers in the whole corporation. He was 25 years old.

In the Summer of 2006 Inter-Tel went through a major restructuring and Matt left the company and went to work for CommWorld of Dallas. Working at a much smaller company, he gained valuable experience in customer service and began to gain a reputation of always going above and beyond to take care of his clients. After founding The Seat Shop the same year with his brother Brian, Matt continued to work at CommWorld while running the “back-end” of The Seat Shop business. In 2007 The Seat Shop had grown to point where Brian could no longer run the day to day operations alone. After gaining the tremendous support from his wife Jill, he left CommWorld and began working with Brian to grow their business together.

Here’s the deal…One of the most common questions we get here at The Seat Shop, is how well our covers will match up with the existing factory leather. Color match is probably the most important characteristic of our covers. We spend hours inspecting and matching our leather hides to the original OEM colors.

Any cover that is not up to our standards will not leave here to just “fill” an order. However, an uncleaned seat can be the biggest problem with our covers initially not matching up with OEM leather. Most of our customers have had between 5-10 years of wear on their seats, and most of them do not take great care of the leather.

An uncleaned, dirty seat can have a great deal of sheen built up on it, giving the leather a shiny, darker appearance. The picture below is of an install we did here at the shop a few months ago. We were replacing the driver and passenger seat bottoms on a 2002 Ford F250. The left top is the passenger side which I had already cleaned. When I set it back down to grab the driver’s side top to clean, this is what I saw:

These two tops are out of the same vehicle and had the same amount of wear on them (minus the tear in the driver’s side). The color and sheen were identical to each other before one of them was cleaned. To see exactly how we clean leather, please check out this video to help you ensure a perfect color match with your new cover.

This post is to help you identify the color of leather that is in your vehicle. The picture below is of a sticker located in the glove box of all Chevy/GMC Trucks and SUV’s. You are looking for a 3 digit code where the below sticker is circled. This 3 digit code will stand alone and will be on the bottom of the sticker that is closest to you when you open the glove box. This is what the sticker looks like:

This vehicle has trim code 922. For a breakdown of all the trim codes, and possible colors of leather for 00-02 Chevy/GMC vehicles, please click here. For 03-06 Chevy/GMC vehicles, please click here. These videos should walk you through every possible leather color. If you are having trouble identifying your trim code and leather color, please feel free to give us a call with the VIN number.

I thought I would just drop you guys a line to say that I was so impressed with the quality and fitment of the leather seat replacements for my Ford F350 Superduty. They fit perfect, identical to the factory seat covers! It’s a pleasure doing business with people that take such pride in their products. I replaced the covers myself, and it was easier than I anticipated. Thanks again for all of your support.

Matt, I just wanted to thank you and The Seat Shop for everything. The cover fit great. You know how to do business the right way. I would highly recommend The Seat Shop to anyone in need of a seat cover. Thanks again.